The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a standard for a secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms. PDF is a file format that preserves fonts, images, graphics, and layout of a source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe® PDF files are compact and complete, and can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software.
The data contained in several homogenous PDF forms may be aggregated by exporting it to a spreadsheet. For example, a separate row in a spreadsheet may store the field's values of the original PDF form. A separate column may store values associated with a particular field of the original PDF forms. The data from several PDF forms may also be exported into a database, where a database record may represent a separate PDF form.
In order to aggregate data from a plurality of PDF forms into a spreadsheet or to import it into a database, a user may need to first make a determination of whether any given electronic form contains data that is appropriate for being transferred into a target spreadsheet or a target database file.